Friday, October 4, 2013

Abbie on a Summer's Day

By Chet
Williamson

Young Abbott Hoffman

In 1961,
Worcester-born Abbie Hoffman, the man who gave us a “revolution for the hell of
it,” opened an art house movie theater in town.

One of
the first films on the schedule was Bert Stern’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day, an improvisational masterpiece that
features Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Anita O’Day, Chico Hamilton (with
Eric Dolphy), Sonny Stitt, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, and Chuck Berry,
among others.

At the
time, the future famous revolutionary was still known by the more formal name
of Abbott Hoffman. He was married, with a son, and working by day as clinical
psychologist at the WorcesterStateHospital.

Biographers
note that Hoffman had a life-long love affair of film. He was an unabashed fan
of Charlie Chaplin in particular. Film critic Pauline Kael and her Cinema Guild
was a model for his venture. He was also inspired by fellow WorcesterStateHospital staff psychologist, Eli Strum,
who according to Jack Hoffman (brother), “introduced the art film of European
directors to Abbie.”

“In
September 1961, Abbie talked a Lebanese friend of our father’s, a used car
salesman named Duddie Massad, into letting Abbie open an art cinema house in an
empty movie theater building he owned. Abbie convinced him that art films were
going to be the wave of the future. And Duddie, who probably hadn’t ever seen
an art film, went along.”

On October
3, 1961
Hoffman officially opened Park Arts in the old ParkArtTheater, most recently known as the
Webster Square Cinema building, at 24 Mill Street. It was
basically a one-person operation and a first of its kind in Worcester. Like the Bijou, Cinema 320, and
other recent art house movie theaters, Park Arts was ahead of its time.

Abbott Hoffman in front of Park Arts

According
to biographer Marty Jezer, Hoffman “selected films, chose the music to play
before and after each screening ('to create an atmosphere suitable for the
film,' he told a local reporter), wrote and mailed a monthly schedule
describing the forthcoming films, selected and sold art posters and books about
movies in the lobby, and encouraged local artists to hang their works there.
Much of his time was tracking down films he wanted to see.”

Hoffman’s
brother Jack added, “For music, Abbie brought over his own phonograph and
record collection. He used to work at the theater from 5:30
p.m.
until midnight, going there directly from WorcesterState. The wife of the projectionist
used to bring him meatball and sausage sandwiches out of pity.”

Hoffman inside theater

In his
book, For the Hell of It, writer
Jonah Raskin said that Park Arts opened with two Ingmar Bergman classics: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), a
romantic comedy, and The Seventh Seal
(1956), a dark and apocalyptic parable of modern life. Later, that same month
he showed Bert Stern’s Jazz on a Summer’s
Day (1959), Akira Kurosawa’s The
Seventh Samuri (1954), and The
Crucible (1957), a French cinematic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play
about the seventeenth century Salem witch trials, which offered
insights on contemporary victims of persecution. Abbie’s film selections certainly
showed good taste.”

Jazz on a Summer’s Day had never been shown in Worcester and Hoffman deserves the credit
of being the first to bring it to town. Internationally viewed as a classic,
and an early “festival film,” it celebrated its 50th anniversary in
2008.

Marking
the milestone, Alan Kurtz wrote this of its filmmaker: “Fielding five cameras
simultaneously, some handheld and with telephoto lenses, and using the finest
35-mm Kodak fast positive-reversal color film, Stern captured brilliant images
that, as he said, ‘just jumped off the screen.’”

Young Bert Stern with camera

“Usually
jazz films are all black and white,” Stern himself later remarked, “kind of
depressing and in little downstairs nightclubs. This brought jazz out into the
sun. It was different.”

Kurtz
also noted that the film employed high-fidelity audio, recorded on monaural
analog tape by Columbia Records and synchronized with the film during
post-production. “This roundabout and complicated process actually represented a
huge advance over such prototypes as Jammin’
the Blues (1944), a smoky, 10-minute simulation of informal small
group jazz.”

“My favorite
memory of the Park Arts Theater was that about a month after it opened Abbie
was playing a documentary about the Newport Jazz Festival, and from the
projection room he noticed me dancing in the aisles to the blues singer Big
Maybelle,” said younger brother Jack. Seeing how much I enjoyed the
show, Abbie scheduled a repeat performance for the following Saturday night,
and let me invite all my friends to come free.”

It is not
known whether or not Hoffman attended the 1959 edition of the Newport Jazz
Festival, at which Jazz on a Summer’s Day
was filmed. However, it is documented that he was in attendance at the Newport
Folk Festival during his time as a student at BrandeisUniversity. It was also common knowledge
that Hoffman was a huge fan of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and other
“left-wing” folksingers of the day.

It should
be noted here that a couple years after the Park Arts venture Hoffman founded
the Prospect House, an inner-city social service agency that focused on
advocacy for the poor. One of his associates was Betty Price, who would later
become one of Worcester’s first black school committee
member. Price was married to bassist Bunny Price, the son of noted trumpeter
Barney Price. Together their group, the Soul Jazz Quartet, played many a benefit
for the Prospect House.

Barney Price

Other
than being a clinical psychologist at the WorcesterStateHospital, the movie house gave Hoffman a
kind of new identity -- something alternative to the “square-world,” to use the
parlance of the day. “Abbie was searching for a new way to be himself,” brother
Jack said, “testing a new persona as if he didn’t have moment to lose. Listen
to him being interviewed by the Worcester
Telegram in an article that appeared in October 1961, soon after the Park
Arts opened, sounding off with all the unblemished intellectual enthusiasm of a
young Truffaut: ‘In a way I may be idealistic, but I believe there’s
entertainment in a thought-provoking adult theme … . To me, a Hollywood production which is geared to the
emotions of a mass audience, and which inevitably ends happily, is obscene.
Such a production is obscene because it isn’t real.”

Hoffman
was interviewed a few times during his ownership of Park Arts. Marty Jezer
notes that as much as he would later profess to be a “man of the people,”
Hoffman had a kind of “elitist, college-boy’s sense of bringing culture to the
locals in this endeavor.” Others say it more bluntly. In 1961, when it came to
art films, Abbott Hoffman, was in fact too much of a snob to sell popcorn. He
was determined to attract a serious clientele to his theater.

“The
crackling of the popcorn makes concentration difficult,’ Hoffman once told a Telegram reporter. “I may be
idealistic,” the future revolutionary said, “but I believe there’s
entertainment in a thought provoking adult theme.”

Brother
Jack says that “within weeks it became clear that the Park Arts wasn’t going to
be a profitable venture. And I remember Duddie trying to pressure Abbie into
having a popcorn stand on the premises so that he might at least have a chance
to recoup some of his lost investment. And Abbie refused, saying that people
had to be able to think while they watched these films and that people eating
popcorn in theater would make too much noise.”

Boyhood
friend Ron Siff, who would later promote major concerts, usually of the
bluegrass persuasion at venues such as Mechanics Hall recalled, “Abbie had two
people sometimes in his theater and I was both of them.

Ron Siff

"I’ll never forget one
night I was alone in the theater, watching The
Magnificent Seven. And it was snowing outside and at the time there was a
trampoline place next door to the theater. I wasn’t aware of this. And Abbie
said, ‘Watch this,’ and he opened up the side door of the theater, walked down
to the end of the aisle that was facing the side door, and he started to run
like crazy out the door, jumps into the air and into a snowdrift about ten
feet, and I’m sitting inside with my eyes wide open…. But he was very
discouraged with the theater, the fact that nobody turned out for it.”

Unfortunately,
Hoffman’s enthusiasm for art films was not shared in the more “working class”
tastes of Worcester. After seven months of struggle, Park Arts closed its
doors. Hoffman would later claim it was at a loss of ten thousand dollars to Duddie
Massad.

A year
later, now separated from his wife and child, Abbie continued to pursue a
career in the world of film. He moved to New York City and secured work managing the
newly opened Baronet-Coronet Theater on Third Avenue.

Hoffman
didn’t stay long in the Big Apple. Homesick, he reconciled with his wife and returned
to Worcester. The rest, as they say, is his
story.

Yippie, Abbie Hoffman

Note: This is a work in
progress. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome at: walnutharmonicas@gmail.com. Also see: www.worcestersongs.blogspot.com Thank you.